Statistical behaviour of self-similar structures in canonical wall turbulence

Abstract

Townsend's attached-eddy hypothesis (AEH) provides a theoretical description of turbulence statistics in the logarithmic region in terms of coherent motions that are self-similar with the wall-normal distance (y). Here, we show the self-similar behaviour of turbulence motions contained within wall-attached structures of streamwise velocity fluctuations using the direct numerical simulation dataset of turbulent boundary layer, channel, and pipe flows ($Re_τ\approx 1000$) The physical sizes of the identified structures are geometrically self-similar in terms of height, and the associated turbulence intensity follows the logarithmic variation in all three flows. Moreover, the corresponding two-dimensional energy spectra are aligned along a linear relationship between the streamwise and spanwise wavelengths ($λ_x$ and $λ_z$, respectively) in the large-scale range ($12y < λ_x <$ 3--4$δ$), which is reminiscent of self-similarity. Consequently, one-dimensional spectra obtained by integrating the two-dimensional spectra over the self-similar range show some evidence for self-similar scaling $λ_x \sim λ_z$ and the possible existence of $k_x^{-1}$ and $k_z^{-1}$ scaling regions in a similar subrange. The present results reveal that the asymptotic behaviours can be obtained by identifying the self-similar coherent structures in canonical wall turbulence, albeit in low Reynolds number flows.